Zuma v Gordhan down to the wire: President encourages Hawks investigation
Last week was one of the most critical in the young South African democracy's history. The ruling ANC has been split down the middle – one camp supporting the old guard of President Jacob Zuma; the other the reformers personified by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. Since his forced reappointment in December, Gordhan has focused on unravelling the "state capture" by Zuma cronies, focusing his efforts on State-owned enterprises and the SA Revenue Services. Lines in the sand include a decision to replace the directorate of SA Airways (chaired by breathtakingly inadequate Zuma Foundation chairman Dudu Myeni) and the Zuma-installed head of SARS Tom Moyane. The Zuma camp has responded through an attack on Gordhan by the Hawks, a police investigations unit stocked with Presidential loyalists. What foreign investors are making of all the drama is anyone's guess. Within SA, however, the business community has rallied strongly behind Gordhan. Should they worry that there might actually be some dirt that the Hawks can use? That their Champion will be ejected and that it soon be a reversion to the old ways of patronage and pillaging of public assets? My information from inside the old SARS executive is the supposed rogue unit is a figment of over-active imaginations. That as with Nenegate, Zuma has again miscalculated the extent of Presidential power in this Constitutional Democracy. Hope Springs. – Alec Hogg
From Fin24
